Trump Tower False Alarm Causes Real Evacuation, and Headache

Hundreds of suspicious packages in Midtown Manhattan were reported to the New York Police Department this year, but its response to one discovered at Trump Tower on Tuesday underscored the challenges and headaches that come with protecting the home of the president-elect.

Though President-elect Donald J. Trump was in Florida during the scare, the package — an abandoned backpack filled with toys — set off an evacuation that sent visitors and employees at the tower running into the streets about 4:30 p.m. and snarled traffic around the Fifth Avenue building.

The police blocked off some of New York City’s most glutted arteries at the peak of the holiday season rush. The closing lasted just over an hour, but it choked traffic for miles. City buses were diverted, hordes of pedestrians were crammed behind barricades, and stores in the area were forced to shut down.

“The current heightened security awareness in this area clearly drew much more attention to yesterday’s incident,” Stephen Davis, a spokesman for the Police Department, said in an email on Wednesday. “This was not a threat or even a mock device but rather an apparent case of a child’s backpack being left inadvertently near the building.”

In Washington, suspicious packages near the White House have become largely routine, and are rarely disruptive. The Secret Service regularly discovers packages left outside the White House gates, often along Pennsylvania Avenue. There, streams of visitors stop in front of the black iron fence to take pictures of the president’s home, as has occurred along Fifth Avenue, where the tower has become a tourist destination.

But that is where the similarities diverge: The 1600 section of Pennsylvania Avenue has been closed to vehicle traffic since 1995. The authorities took that step temporarily in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing; it was made permanent six years later, after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the rest of the nation’s capital, the discovery of a suspicious package does not usually cause serious traffic issues.

At Trump Tower, the backpack was found by the Secret Service by the lobby entrance of the Niketown store, where a corridor leads into a public atrium, the authorities said. A rough cordon around the 58-story tower, which sits between 56th and 57th Streets, and its surroundings went into almost immediate play: Both Fifth and Madison Avenues were closed to traffic from 55th to 57th Streets as the investigation unfolded.

On Madison Avenue, a police officer ordered city buses to turn west up the narrow streets. “Please just cross,” he told a pedestrian who asked him a question. “I’m really frazzled right now.”

As people streamed away from the tower entrance, several police officers grabbed waist-high metal barriers and used them to herd the crowd southward along Fifth Avenue, slowly moving the people in front of them away from the building. “I know Ivanka,” someone shouted from the crowd in feeble resistance.

At Obicà, a mozzarella bar inside the atrium that abuts the tower lobby, eight tables of diners evacuated mid-meal did not return, according to the manager, and the restaurant joined the growing number of stores unhappy about how the protection efforts, including permanent street closings and police patrols, have hurt business around the tower.

Shortly after the tower reopened about 5:30 p.m., tourists in the pink marble lobby were taking selfies by the escalators, many unaware of the episode — and what had been perhaps the city’s biggest test yet in protecting the soon-to-be president’s penthouse home.

For the city, the police response also highlighted the huge financial cost associated with protecting Trump Tower. When Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s newly named press secretary, posted a message of thanks to the Police Department on Twitter after the false alarm, Eric Phillips, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, posted a riposte: “We’ll send you the bill.” City officials have requested reimbursement from the federal government for providing security for Mr. Trump, a cost they estimate will reach $35 million by his Jan. 20 inauguration. So far, $7 million has been set aside by federal officials.

“Yesterday’s incident is another reminder of the new reality the N.Y.P.D. and New Yorkers face in this postelection period,” Austin Finan, a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio, said in an email on Wednesday. “While complex security challenges are nothing new for the N.Y.P.D., the scope of this task and its associated responsibilities is unprecedented. Protecting the president-elect is inherently a national responsibility for which New York City shouldn’t be left to foot the bill.”

Those inside the tower during the evacuation described a mix of measured and panicked responses. Video captured by a camera crew in the lobby showed parents clinging to their children as they ran across the marble.

A Trump Organization employee, who declined to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the news media, said the upper floors had not been evacuated. “If it’s your time, it’s your time,” the employee recalled thinking as an announcement asking for calm and stating that an investigation was underway came over the building’s speakers. “This is the new norm for those that are here now,” she said.

Nick Corasaniti and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: False Alarm at Trump Tower Unveils a New Reality. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe